Mos Americanus or Common Law in Partibus Infidelium

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

The Catholic University of America Press eBooks, 2007

1988

How do we form communities? How might we form better ones? What is the role of law in that process? In a recent series of books and articles, James Boyd White, arguably the modern law and literature movement's founder, has put forward distinctively literary answers to these questions. 1 Perhaps because of the fluidity of the humanities, White's account of the nature of community is not nearly as axiomatic to the law and literature movement as is Posner's depiction of the "individual" to legal economists. 1 Nevertheless, White's conception is increasingly representative of the literary-legalist's world view. Furthermore, with the exception of Richard Weisberg, White has very little competition within the movement itself.' This article explores and criticizes that vision. Second, it puts forward an alternative account of how we form communities, how we might form better ones, and how law would function within them.

Routledge Handbook of International Law and the Humanities, 2021

History and Anthropology, 2015

Historians and anthropologists are confronted with a persistent problem for which there is no clear solution: the conceptual tools which we use to attempt to understand cultures are themselves products of (often) the very cultures we are attempting to understand. Take “religion”. Daniel Boyarin (2004) has argued that the very concept of “religion” as we know it was a product of the fourth and fifth centuries, as bishops and emperors constructed Christianity as a religion (the true one, of course), and in counterdistinction constructed “Judaism” and “Hellenism” (or paganism) as “false” religions. For Boyarin, Judaism only becomes a “religion” when Christian authorities define it as one. The same could be said for the jumble of texts, beliefs and rituals that the English, upon arriving in India, lump together under the name “Hinduism”, which they turn into a religion. Building, defining and policing borders between confessional groups has been an important part of constructing identities—or visions of community—in various societies, in particular those ruled by Christians or Muslims, from the time of the fourth-century Christian Roman emperors. What did one have to do to be considered belonging to the “true” or dominant religious community: what doctrines, institutional affiliations, or ritual performances were necessary? How were other religions defined as separate and legitimate? What to do with those who seemed to fit in no category of accepted religion: the realm of syncretists and heretics? In this article, I examine how Christian and Muslim jurists of the fourth to eleventh centuries use law to define and police confessional boundaries, in particular how they attempt to limit interactions that could transgress or blur those boundaries: shared meals, sexual contact, syncretic practices.

2009

This book is one in a series of publications by a working research group at the University of Barcelona, Mimesi (http://stel.ub.edu/mimesi/), which has as its primary goal the study of literature and literary theory in the Renaissance and Baroque periods connected with the literary culture of Catalonia, focusing also on how Catalonian culture interacted with other European literary cultures and traditions during the early modern period. The working group organizes conferences, workshops, and other scholarly meetings, which have generated numerous publications, including

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais

Intersections in Law, Culture and the Humanities* Ever more often, researchers and scholars endeavor to situate law in its social, political, historical and cultural contexts. At the same time, there is a need to invest law and the social sciences with new roles and resources. We thus propose to look for the many intersections of law, culture and the humanities by presenting four topical preoccupations: (1) interlegality in everyday life; (2) the synesthesia of law; (3) material socio-legal studies; and (4) interactive ecologies of knowledges and methodologies. This will constitute part one of the paper. Parts two and three will look at two particular and very recent interdisciplinary relationships: those between law and music and between law and food. We thus propose it would be appropriate to expose students, learners and practitioners of all kinds to the difference that an understanding of the links between law, culture and the humanities makes.